Narrative

In simple terms, a 'story' is a sequence of events that happen to a character or a group of characters. However, for a story to work for an audience, it often refers back to 'how the story is told' as with the events themselves. It can be looked upon like a comedian telling a joke that eventually forms a short story. Comedians can recover bad jokes through various techniques, such as facial expressions, body gestures, a funny voice, impersonation and repeating lines to prompt the audience to laugh. These actions don't add anything to the events of the story, but they are a part of the narrative - the structure and organisation of the story.

Certain parts of stories are selected so that they are entertaining and people do not get bored because they are long winded - this is part of the structuring process. When a writer is thinking up a story for a film, they take the key events and place them in order - giving the film a narrative. By the end of the film, the audience needs to be satisfied that the story makes sense.

To make a story interesting, they need to involve the audience in their events. A successful film will have a strong narrative drive - some films being described as having a roller-coaster of a ride narrative (the audience experience emotions of high pleasure or deep despair as the narrative rushes up to a climax, or dives down to a crisis)

Three Act Structure:
• Act One: setting up the conflict
• Act Two: the struggle
• Act Three: resolving the conflict

Aspects of Film Narrative:

Narrator
• Most films are told in the third person. A story unfolds in a series images shown to us through a series of camera angles and shots, with accompanying sound. Being drawn into the story by an undefined narrator
• In some films, one character in the story tells the story through a voice over.
•Sometimes the narrator appears only on the soundtrack - an unknown voice-over, sometimes caled the 'voice of god'
• A few films have used several narrators to tell the same story from different viewpoints - offereing the audience alternative versions of the same event.

Character Relationships: 
• Stories need characters. Their - what they say and do - create dramatic conflicts and promote interests in the story.
• In any narrative, the main characters create conflict and move the story along. The hero and villain principle.
• It is easier to follow stories when you can easily understand who the hero ad villains are.
• Some of the most interesting stories are those which break the rules. Stories which include an 'anti-hero' - characters who a central to the story, but fail to be heroic. Therefor the audience are not quite sure how to react thus making the story interesting.

Narrative Time: 
• A film usually lasts between 90-120 minutes - this is screen time.
• Within screen time, the filmmaker must present the story and deal with events that might take place over hours, days, weeks or even years - this is story time.
• Some films operate in real time, where the story takes place in the given screen time.
• Filmmakers use a range of editing techniques to 'move the story on'. These include:
      - the ways cuts and fades are used between images
      - Creating montages, a series of short sequences or single images that indicate the passage of time
        (eg the same street scene in autumn, winter, spring, summer etc.)
      - changing the length of shots to the pace of shot changes to speed up or slow down the story.
      - using flashbacks to show events from the past, and much more rarely, 'flash-forwards'.

Narrative Space: 
• Films set in particular places, and the locations of scenes in a film may vary for particular reasons.
• Particular locations can be suggestive to an audience
• Some particular locations are used to heighten the drama of a sequence

Significant Objects: 
• The types of location can have a different cultural meaning.
• A particular type of building can make us think about glamour, foreign travel and romance, whilst other buildings would make you think of danger and crime.
• How a character is dressed in a film or the way their hair is can tell us a lot about who who they are.
• A character wearing an expensive outfit with a designer label would represent a very different person wearing shabby, nondescript clothes.

Audience Knowledge: 
• Narratives can be manipulated due to audience knowledge - how much do we, the audience, know about what is happening and is that knowledge shared via the central characters?
• Suspense and comedy can often depend on the different knowledge the audience have compared to the other characters.
• A clever filmmaker can 'play' the audience, using their knowledge (or lack of) to build tension.

Narratives & Genre: 
• Narratives can be grouped together according to various similarities:
      - setting (location, historical time period)
      - characters
      - significant objects
      - themes
      - structures, sequence of events
• Certain genres will have a narrative that is known to feature certain elements of the categories.

Sources:
Book - Reading Films, Key concepts for analysing film and television, Jackie Newman and Rory Stafford.